Temporal Displacement

Woke up to rain and had no idea whether it was evening or morning. Enjoyed that feeling for a few minutes, of not actually caring. Three in the morning, as usual, and I decided to stay up, make a cup of tea and read Thoreau for a couple of hours. I marvel more and more what people do with their time. I don't mean that in any critical way, I'm just amazed. Hard rain that finally died off about noon, and I needed to get down to B's, to assist getting the meat started. Two old poets barding a beef roast and rubbing a pork loin. Like Pinter on the bus in London, I'll listen to the conversation. I have water for a sponge-bath and a hair-wash, I'm prepared to be civil. It was great fun to prepare and start the meat with B, as neither of us knew what we were doing. We agreed that failure was the only way to learn anything, but suspect this meal might be pretty good. We're both good at this, and we conspire well together. In the course of your life, you don't find that many people to conspire with, so it's good to nail down the date, May 15th, 2016. A Sunday in May. I can't even listen to the news, the Republican party, Trump, spare me, I rather elect a clown, oh, wait a minute. B's calls, and, as feared, the smoker is too hot, I tell him to unplug it, don't open it, and we'll deal with it in the morning (the actual 15th, which dawns blue and beautiful). I call him as soon as I'm awake and he says the meat is cooked, but that we'd need a sauce. I tell him I'll be down at noon and we'll build a sauce from his larder. I'd looked at his larder, when I was down there yesterday, and I think we can make a very nice enchilada, wine, onion, blackberry juice thing, that we can reduce for an hour and will be perfect. Fruit, with the smoke, a bit of sweetness, seems to make sense. It's cold, I start a fire and take a nap. The meat was good, a little over-cooked but tasty, we made a great sauce. After the potato salad and beans arrived, people just started eating, and new items kept arriving, cheese stuffed olives, deviled eggs, slaw, another salad. A grand time. Kids running everywhere. No political talk at all, but some nice conversations about morels, about how the new bridge over Turkey Creek will be that ugly modern type that actually doesn't look like a bridge at all (it looks like a road), and about what beans Ronnie had planted. One bunch of the adults went off with B to look at some plum trees, and I slipped away. I'm not used to the noise level, though I did enjoy some of the one-liners hurled across the room. Zoe has a potty-mouth and she's a lot of fun to be around. There are always at least two divorced couples at a Richards' gathering, sharing kids or grand-kids, and everyone is fine with that. Everyone watches the kids. Jenny lost track of her toddler, but we found him behind the sofa. No harm, no foul, but a few hours of social interaction will do me for a while. The whole panoply of human interaction, all at once, overlapping, for a simple hermit, is difficult to process.